Richard is a Partner in the real estate team specialising in the healthcare sector. Richard has 15 years of experience of working with healthcare and other public and private sector bodies and organisations locally and nationally on a wide range of property transactions (including NHS trusts, NHS Foundation Trusts, Clinical Commissioning Groups, Integrated Care Boards, GPs, charities and NHS England).

Experience:

• Richard specialises in property disposals and acquisitions, acting for landlords/tenants on leases and other occupational documents (including MOTOs and Licences and ULPA’s for LIFT buildings), site developments with overage and clawback arrangements, the giving of strategic estates management advice and dealing with general landlord and tenant queries within the healthcare sector.
• Richard has been instructed on a wide range of complex commercial disposals, acquisitions and redevelopments, which include overage and clawback, as well as contracts that are subject to the grant of satisfactory planning permission being achieved. Richard is also used to linking in and working alongside colleagues in other specialist teams so that clients receive prompt and cohesive advice on matters involving planning, construction and property litigation.
• Richard completed his law degree at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle.

Particular examples of Richard’s experience include:

Leases and Licences

• Acting for healthcare clients in either granting or entering into leases or licences to use land and buildings. This includes both major strategic transactions (such as leases for new HQ buildings ) and also more day to day transactions (such as the granting of leases to NHS bodies in relation to their community estate). Richard also has recent experience of leading a major project for Harrogate involving the completion of 27 separate MOTO agreements with NHS PS.

Acquisitions and Disposals

• Acting for an NHS Trust on a £4m conditional sale of former hospital premises for residential and commercial development with complex overage provisions.
• Acting for an NHS Trust on a series of property disposals by way of auction.

Site Development

• Dealing with site developments including the relocation of apparatus and the removal of utility materials (working closely with a wider teams consisting of property litigation, construction and planning colleagues). In particular recently acting for a prominent Trust on a strategic site development which involved the complex relocation of gas and electricity apparatus.
• Acting for NHS England in relation to numerous grant funding agreements for the re-development of supported living premises.

Commercial transactions and Joint Ventures

• Advising a leading private healthcare provider on the property aspects of its multi million pound share sale to a US based healthcare.
• Advising NHS Trusts on the real estate aspects of pathology and pharmacy services outsourcings.

General Estate Management

• Richard works closely with a number of NHS bodies reviewing the management of their estates from a legal perspective including collating and documenting information to evaluate the property portfolio and to identify the extent of the property estate (with a view to identifying both surplus land for disposal to generate capital receipts and previously undocumented tenancies which need to regularised.

Outside of Healthcare sector

• Richard also specialises in the education property sector having acted for schools, academies, colleges, and universities in the management of their estates.
• Richard also has significant retail and general commercial property experience having acted for a wide variety of organisations including retail investment funds, building societies and national bodies.

Outside of work Richard enjoys spending time with his family and children (who seem to have a better social life than him) and the new family puppy, Margot.